Tom Dennis can guess the weight of a catfish just by looking at it. "That thing's got to be in the mid-20s," Dennis said last week at Little's Fish Market in Germantown. "See? I'm getting good at this." He wasn't ordering his dinner. His catfish was headed for the ice at Bridgestone Arena.

Little Jimmy Dickens’ hat, boots and guitar held center stage of the Grand Ole Opry Thursday as the country music community said a final goodbye to one of their mainstays.

The 4 foot 11 singer was known for his joke telling and novelty songs, but speakers like Vince Gill remembered his kindness and longevity. “If only the good die young,” Gill said, “the greatest of all live to be 94 and sing two weeks before they pass on. And that’s pretty remarkable.”

Dickens was the last remaining Opry member to have performed with Uncle Dave Macon. Singer Connie Smith remembered him as always being quick to welcome new musicians to the fold. Calling Dickens “the heart of the Grand Ole Opry,” Smith said “I watched him so many times stand at the side of this Opry stage and assess everything. He was there to support and to love.”

Home sales in the Nashville area finished the year more than 7 ½ percent higher than 2013. The numbers released by the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors show a strong finish to the year with 16 percent more homes sold in December and in the fourth quarter overall. But not all areas of Middle Tennessee had a banner year.

Robertson County’s home sales were down slightly and Cheatham County was basically flat.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Laura Hunter of Ashland City who has a house on the market.

Hunter says she’s given up on using a realtor to sell her house and is now trying on her own. She says the realtor's fee was adding too much to the selling price.

Decision day comes Friday for 13,300 students in Nashville. That’s how many have applied to attend a school other than the one that’s closer to home – a record figure, by far.

The number is slightly padded from previous years because all eighth graders now have to choose which high school they’ll attend. But still, applications have been growing for the last few years as the district promotes choice and as more and more charter schools open in the city.

In President Obama’s third visit to Tennessee in the past year, he will be announcing a proposal that would make community college free for all Americans, called America’s College Promise. Details are still emerging, but it could look similar to Tennessee Promise.

Obama released a Facebook video Thursday evening saying he will commend Tennessee on its education reform and then propose a way to make college accessible for everyone:

On January 8, 1815, Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson lead a ragtag group of American soldiers to an unlikely victory in the Battle of New Orleans. Nobody could have known it at the time, but that win propelled Jackson to become the first self-made man in the White House and helped him change the nature of presidential campaigns.

Jackson was a country boy who grew up poor and fatherless. His mother died during the Revolutionary War, around the same time he was a teenaged prisoner of war. By the time the War of 1812 broke out, he’d managed to become a wealthy frontier lawyer in a brand-new Nashville. He’d even served a brief term as Tennessee’s first Congressman. But even as an officer, Andrew Jackson was still just a militia volunteer, not a member of the regular army.

WPLN featured the Lincoln County plant in a story last year about the area’s surprisingly low unemployment rate, which has dipped below 5 percent in the past year. Goodman, which makes air conditioning units, is the major employer in town and has been for decades. Multiple generations work there.

Sue Jordan and her father spent many years listening to Little Jimmy Dickens on the radio at the Grand Ole Opry. But their connection to the Opry legend was also personal.

Jordan, a school teacher, had Dickens’ granddaughter April as a student one year and it allowed her to arrange a meeting between her father and Dickens — two West Virginia natives with a passion for music.

“You would have thought he and my Dad had known each other for years,” said Jordan.

“My dad loved to play the harmonica and always listened to the Grand Ole Opry and Little Jimmy Dickens,” she said. “And that was the pleasure of my Dad to be able to meet him and speak with him and sing and play the harmonica with him.”

Gov. Bill Haslam says he understands why some state lawmakers are demanding more details about his plan to expand health coverage for the poor.

Nearly a month has passed since he said the proposal would be coming, but it still hasn’t been released, a situation that has many conservatives concerned. But Haslam told reporters Wednesday that the proposal, which he’s calling Insure Tennessee, will be out this week — well before the state House and Senate have to start debating it.

“This is a big deal, and we want the legislators to know exactly what it is that we’re proposing, so this will give everybody two or three weeks to review it,” he said. “Obviously we’re hurrying as much as we can to get the waiver finished.”

Haslam says Washington officials generally like his idea to expand Medicaid through health savings accounts or vouchers for employer-provided insurance. But the federal government and the legislature both must sign off before it can be enacted.

The Tennessee Republican said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning that the Cuban government hasn’t yet lived up to its end of the bargain — which includes releasing 53 political prisoners. But he added, he’s keeping an open mind.

Lawmakers in Nashville and Washington, including Gov. Bill Haslam and Sen. Bob Corker, have been talking about raising the gas taxes on both the state and federal levels.

A double whammy might not sit well with drivers, but Commissioner John Schroer, the state’s top transportation official, says the need for more money cannot be ignored.

He says the approximately $650 million that Tennessee brings in annually soon will be enough only to keep the state’s roads patched up — without any new construction projects. With that in mind, Tennessee leaders shouldn’t let talk in Congress of raising the federal gas tax keep them from considering a state hike as well.

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Studio C was brimming with energy when two dozen 5th and 6th graders arrived from Scales Elementary School in Murfreesboro. Together, they form Steel de Boro, an after school student steel drum band lead by percussionist and Scales music teacher Tony Hartman. The group played several originals by Hartman and wrapped up their set with a Herbie Hancock classic.

Joshua Bell describes finding his instrument, a 300-year-old Stradivarius violin, as a “kind of love story that only happens once or twice in one’s life.” It’s a love story that involves more than a little bit of luck, too.

This weekend, Nashville Ballet will debut Modern Masters, a new initiative designed to bring the work of the world's finest choreographers to Middle Tennessee audiences. The program includes works by George Balanchine, Jiří Kylián and Christopher Wheeldon— and while these names might be unfamiliar to the ballet novice, Nashville Ballet company member Judson Veach emphasized just how iconic they are in the dance world.